Zusammenfassung
Objective: Previous studies dealing with effects of psychiatric illness on patients' families mostly focussed on concerns of the parents. The siblings' role as a caregiver, however, has been mostly disregarded or forgotten about. Method: 37 narrative interviews with siblings of schizophrenia patients were analysed using a summarizing content analysis. The global statements and categories were ...
Zusammenfassung
Objective: Previous studies dealing with effects of psychiatric illness on patients' families mostly focussed on concerns of the parents. The siblings' role as a caregiver, however, has been mostly disregarded or forgotten about. Method: 37 narrative interviews with siblings of schizophrenia patients were analysed using a summarizing content analysis. The global statements and categories were quantitatively analysed to assess their relative importance. Results: Analysis of the 492 individual statements of the siblings revealed 26 global types of statements which were assigned to five categories: 1."Burden arising in the daily contact with the sibling" (36.2 %), 2."Burden with respect to the healthy sibling's privacy" (26.8 %), 3."Burden with respect to the contact with the family" (15.7 %), 4.,Burden with respect to the contact with institutions and professionals" (14.2 %), 5."Burden with respect to the siblings' own social contacts (friends/ public)" (7.1 %). The three types of burden most reported by the healthy siblings are:,Handling the symptoms of illness" (100%),"Emotional burden due to the illness of the sibling" (100%) and "Uncertainty in judging what amount of stress the schizophrenia patient can cope with" (81.1%). Conclusions: Siblings of schizophrenia patients are burdened in many aspects. More attention should be given to their outpatient and inpatient medical treatment.
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